The 3B team have just returned from this year’s sensational Joomla Convention, “J and Beyond” – a 4 day celebratory geek-fest of all that is wonderful in the world of Open Source. This is the second year that Jack Bremer & I have attended, and this year we took along our Lead Developer, Jordan Worner, and our Head of Search, Hugh Williams.

It can’t go without mention that this is also undoubtedly a social occasion! Whilst the vast majority of delegates’ time was spent deep in code, it cannot escape the notice of anyone who has viewed the many personal photo galleries and blogs that sprung up during and immediately after J and Beyond that the friendships forged and renewed were toasted and lubricated by the finest ale that Rolduc had to offer... and more often than not it was very fine indeed.

Our own social experience started early when the 3B team met up with Philp Locke (@philiplocke, Owner of Fastnet Web Design), Alan Sparkes (@joomkit, JoomKit) and Simon Wells (@k2joom, K2Joom) for a very early breakfast in Dover. Our journey to J and beyond was to serve as a “proof of concept” for next year’s “JoomBall Rally” – an opportunity for delegates to meet up with a growing convoy of vehicles from across Europe as we converge on the venue.

Just a few short hours later we had crossed the channel to Calais and arrived in Bruges for lunch. We spent far too little time in this extraordinarily beautiful Belgian city – but long enough to resolve to return here for a more leisurely visit at the earliest opportunity. By 7pm we were at our final destination in time for an evening’s indoor skiing! Here, in this colossal mile-long fridge-on-a-hill we met up with friends and comrades not seen since last year’s event (despite frequent communication in the “CyberSphere”).

I should point out that, personally, I attend these events very much from a business development perspective; it’s been a very long time now since I have had to code anything, but my appreciation of the collective efforts of this extraordinary community is borne of a fundamental understanding of what is achievable within Digital at a core level, and it is an honour and a pleasure be able to express this appreciation personally at conventions such as this.

Compared to me, Jack Bremer (@jackbremer) has far more contemporary and practicable technical experience that augments the efforts of Hugh (@hughhwilliams) and Jordan (@jordanworner), and so for these 3 the weekend’s events served as an extraordinarily valuable opportunity to increase their understanding of all that is new and exciting in Open Source and Joomla. For Hugh and Jordan it was especially terrific to actually meet the very folk who develop and release the platforms, tools and extensions that they use every day, and it was an utter delight to witness their enthusiasm to attend the various and varied series of seminars and workshops that made up the weekend’s programme.

Moreover, Hugh, Jordan and Jack all took the opportunity to present to the community. Hugh and Jack both delivered talks on “Best Practice”. In Hugh’s case it was “Pimp Your Joomla SEO” – a very well received seminar covering all the steps required during the development of a Joomla website from siopente-brief onwards (up until launch... post launch “off-site” SEO will be covered in a future talk). Hugh was particularly satisfied when one of the most impressed attendees turned out to be Yannick Gaultier, developer of one of Hugh and Jack’s favourite and most-used plug-ins, “SH404SEF”.

Jack’s talk was on site-launch Best Practice: “Launch It Right, Or Prepare For A Fight”. In it he covered the long list of items that we consider most vital prior and during a new site launch, and name-checked the tools that we find help us in the process. Jack invited contributions and suggestions from the floor and the seminar will serve to help us update our Best Practice spreadsheet before we release it back to the community.

Jordan’s talk was a far more technical document. “Joomla admin for (dummies) your clients - the way it should be” set out to explain how better to deliver an Admin Interface that reduced the opportunities for a client to mess-up a site page layout and functionality. There was a moment of pure theatre as Jordan demonstrated an extraordinary new drag-and-drop front-end module admin that won him a spontaneous round of applause. I was very proud!

Far too quickly this event comes to an end, and again our “JoomBall” Rallyers climbed aboard their steeds for the return journey. A terrific lunch this time in Brussels joined by Marcos Peebles (PiezoWorks) before we bade each other a weary farewell at Dover – again resolving to reconvene next May for JAB12! Miss out at your peril, Open Sourcerers!

Miriam is our back-office administrator - seen only in times of bookkeeping or store-room emergencies it’s Miriam that keeps us all calm and in tea & coffee whilst ensuring that her husband Alex at least looks busy while in the office.

Peter is our Junior PHP Developer, supporting our clients' existing sites as well as being involved in new projects. Among his daily duties is managing our helpdesk support tasks and so most of our clients are likely to hear back from Peter as one of our primary contacts.

Having graduated from the City University of London with a degree in Media and Communications Elena joined 3B in 2018 in a Marketing Assistant role. During her free time she likes to play drums and travel the World.

Matt is our PHP Developer; a broad job description that involves Matt in pretty much everything that 3B does. Among his daily duties is managing our helpdesk support tasks and so most of our clients are likely to hear back from Matt as one of our primary contacts.

Responsible for driving projects and tasks through to delivery in a role that makes him the first and most prominent point of contact for the vast majority of our clients as well as the main conduit of communication and delegation within the 3B office.

Jack joined 3B in 2005. Since then, Jack has expanded the 3B portfolio of offerings, and is in charge of many of the online marketing and technical aspects of the running of the company and configuration of various online services for clients.

David joined 3B in early 2016 in a DevOps / SysOps role to streamline the workflows of the rest of the Development team and increase their efficiency, manage server configuration and supervise the deployment & security processes.

Greg is a Graphic Designer with a keen eye for clean, sharp design. Ever striving to produce relevant, up to date and aesthetically pleasing work he is also the only one in the office actually able to almost kick the ceiling.

Apr 2, 2014

Latest from our blog

Justifying and articulating why a logo works is an exercise fraught with well-worn cliches, creative psychobabble and straw-grabbing; for the most part one instinctively knows when something is right. In the case of our beloved 3B pencil the appropriateness of application seems endless; aside from the fact that the 3B pencil is specifically a creative one, it remains a direct link with our past whilst remaining relevant today.

Jan 18, 2019

Latest case study

What singles this particular project out as a deeply satisfactory Squarespace instance is that - for once - absolutely no code injection or css overrides were required; this site is absolutely standard in terms of code and template presets, and this reflected in the fact that it was delivered for less than half of the original estimated cost.